


Stories

by PaperRevolution



Series: The Opposite of Prodigal [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1910s, Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Family, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 18:36:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12326583
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution
Summary: Nerdanel tells her young sons a story.





	Stories

The day They came, everything stopped.

No more lights. No more locomotors. No more telegrams. Even the gramophone stuttering to a halt. Sudden silence, everywhere.

Nerdanel has told the story more than enough times, now. How she’d been just a little girl at the time, sitting aboard a train with her father. How the shiny new steam train had come to a juddering, clattering halt as it breathed its last whistling puff. She remembers, clearly, dropping a jam sandwich into its paper wrappings and looking around. Startled faces; bewildered faces—but no fear, not yet.

For some reason, it’s this story her children clamour for. This is the one they always want to hear. Her seven shining boys, her bright hope, thirsty for tales of the end. Children, she knows, are sanguine; full of an innocent, unthinking sort of morbid curiosity. And she can hardly ever say no, because if she is honest with herself, she wants to remember. She wants to be back there; to be just a child herself, on a day out with her Papa. 

On the days when she feels she can’t go back there, the children have another favourite story:

“Tell about the day,” they will say, crowding around her on the hearth rug, “Tell about the day you met Father!”

* * *

Nerdanel is fixing the roof when she meets Fëanor.

She has always been good at fixing things. She has a quick hand and a good eye for detail, her father says. Now that he has been touched by Them, he shakes and forgets things and does not leave the house, and so it has fallen to her to take care of things.

The weather, as is usual since They came, does not know what to do with itself. Last night brought a storm that dislodged several roof-tiles, but today is oppressively hot. Nerdanel’s heavy hair is held back by a damp kerchief, but even still, she is uncomfortable. She pauses from her work for a moment, straightening her aching back and stretching her arms skyward for a moment before letting them drop to her sides. She huffs out a breath, a loose strand of sodden hair swaying limply in her face. Annoyed, she reaches up again to brush it aside.

And then she sees him.

He is on horseback. He wears a long, dark coat—in this weather!—which flares behind him. He leans forward in the saddle, all coiled urgency.

And behind him, They come.

Nerdanel’s breath catches.

They are low to the ground, spiderlike and relentless. They are a fuzzy, indistinct blackness, like inkblots, or shadows.

In a few moments, they will be upon him.

Then, quite suddenly, they stop. And Nerdanel lets out a breath she had not realised she has been holding. In perfect timing, their many spider-eyes have seen the Likeness.

The Likeness stands high on the hill behind the house. It’s Him, the one They call Master, swathed in black and eerily convincing. His face thunderous—and meticulously painted—he points away, away from the house. To look at him, you could almost imagine you can hear his bellowed “Go!”

He is perfectly lifelike. He makes Nerdanel shiver, despite the fact that she sculpted and painted him herself, painstakingly.

But she is not looking at the Likeness, now. She is looking at Them. And They are beginning to turn tail.

How many times, she wonders, have the stupid creatures made the same mistake, now? She almost laughs.

By the time she has scrambled down from the roof, They are gone. Their prey, though, does not seem to have realised this.

“Stop!” Nerdanel cries. “Stop! They’re gone!”

Several things happen in quick succession. The stranger glances over his shoulder, yanks at the reins, and turns his horse about. His eyes—she is too far away to see the colour of them—are wide with blank disbelief.

“They’re gone!” she calls again, striding towards him now. “It’s all right!”

He sits like a stone, shoulders clenched, breathing hard.

“Up there,” she tells him as she approaches. “On the hill.”

The stranger’s eyes—stormy grey, she notices now—follow her pointing finger. His expression freezes and his intake of breath snarls in his throat. It takes him several seconds to realise—

“That’s—He—It’s not real. It’s not real.”

Nerdanel finds that she has to fight the urge to laugh. “No,” she says evenly, “It isn’t. But it’s quite good, isn’t it?”

His expression darkens. “Not really the word I’d use.”

“Well, it saved your life, didn’t it?”

He looks at her for a long moment, uncomprehending, and this time she does laugh, the sound gusting irresistibly out of her.

“Well, why else do you think it’s there?” she shakes her head, letting out another uneasy chuckle. “D’you think I made it just for fun? Think I find that attractive?”

The stranger’s mouth works, as though he’s forming a retort but his brain can’t quite catch up with the situation. Then his expression breaks, and suddenly the both of them are laughing. Not nervous laughter, now, either, but full peals of abandon. She doesn’t remember the last time she laughed like this. She doesn’t remember the last time she even spoke a word to anyone who isn’t her father.

“You should stay,” she tells him, when she has composed herself a little. “You should stay for dinner.”


End file.
